James Potter is a Dad
by elanev91
Summary: Title says it all, really. Little fic for my favourite (ugh, fine, second favourite) dad. Happy Father's Day, James Potter xxxx Title from professor-riddikulus because I'm shit at them.


**Little fic for my favourite (ugh, fine, second favourite) dad.**

 **Happy Father's Day, James Potter xxxx**

* * *

When James first became a father, he was absolutely terrified - they were twenty, fighting a bloody _war_ , and he had no idea what he was doing, no clue what their future looked like, no idea how he and Lily were even going to get through the next year of their lives, and _now_ they had Harry. Tiny, fragile little Harry, with his grasping hands, little toes, Lily's adorable nose, and a smile that Lily kept saying couldn't possibly be a real smile yet, but James knew better.

When the Healer first put Harry into his arms, his heart had expanded so much that his chest practically cracked under the strain _,_ and when he looked up at Lily, tears rolling down their faces, he knew that his entire life had changed, that their whole world had shifted on its axis.

Harry taught him how to function on 45 minutes of interrupted sleep, how to do up a nappy in less than a minute, how to turn anything, literally anything, into a toy, revealed just how shitty James was at cleaning spells. He learned that lying on his back in the sitting room and staring at the ceiling fan with Harry was a lot more fun than it sounded, that the feeling of utter relief you feel when your son finally closes his eyes and _goes the fuck to sleep_ is one of the best feelings in the entire world, that there is nothing, _nothing_ like hearing Harry laugh. Except maybe hearing Lily and Harry laughing together - yes, that was definitely his favourite.

They used to take him out on long walks in the pram when he was a newborn, walked him up and down the high street, Lily smiling broadly up at James in the summer sun while he fretted with Harry's blanket, tried to keep the little sunhat on his head. Lily always laughed, "He's got enough hair on his head, James, and the pram has a cover on," but it never stopped him worrying about it. "His skin is sensitive, Lils, don't you remember what the Healer told us?!"

Lily would just loop her arm through his, pull him down, and press a kiss to his cheek, "The Healer also said he needs sun, love. He'll be fine."

Once James had gotten over the all-consuming fear that he was going to drop Harry (or lose him, or feed him something he's not supposed to have, or leave something on the ground that he'll accidentally hurt himself with, or literally a million other things that he'd never _once_ thought about before), he realised just how hilarious it is to do things with Harry just to make Lily angry. Harry, for instance, loved it when James tucked him under his arm like a quaffle and ran through the back garden or threw him up into the air. Lily, on the other hand, thought these things were "NOT EVEN REMOTELY FUNNY, JAMES," but that, of course, just made him do it more.

He also got an exorbitant amount of amusement watching Lily try to tame Harry's increasingly wild hair.

James had tried to tell her, once Harry's hair started growing in shortly after he was born, that there was going to be no taming it. "He's got my hair, love, have you ever _once_ seen my hair lie flat?" But Lily was determined, and James couldn't help but laugh as he watched her fail (and fail spectacularly) for the first time in her life.

He also rubbed a bit of salt in the wound, and asked Sirius to bring over some of his hair styling products. They spent an afternoon styling Harry's hair into increasingly horrible styles, taking pictures, and hiding them throughout the cottage for Lily to find.

Though he had James' hair, he had Lily's eyes, something that he told her he loved every single day. She'd said, when he was first born, that she wanted Harry to have James' hazel eyes, that she loved the way the colours changed, the way they lit up when he smiled, but he'd always been adamant that Harry needed to have her eyes. Her eyes were the most beautiful things he'd ever seen - he loved how gorgeously green they were, the way they sparked with gold when she laughed, the way they didn't look like any other eyes he'd ever seen. "No," he'd said, smiling down at her as he brushed a piece of hair out of her eyes, "he's got to have your eyes."

When Harry woke up one morning, around six months old, with dark, emerald green eyes, James had danced around the kitchen telling Lily, "See, I told you he would look better with your eyes!"

She flicked a bit of porridge at him, which Harry found absolutely hilarious.

They tried to keep things from changing too much when they had to go into hiding. They couldn't take Harry out onto the high street anymore, but they'd warded a bit of their back garden, so Harry could still get a bit of sunshine and roll around in the grass. Most of their life, though, was spent inside the house. Harry had been irritated at first, had crawled over to the pram, pushed it unsteadily around the house while screaming at them, but then he'd turned one and they'd gotten him that broom. Once he realised how fun it was to chase the poor cat around the house, he gave up on the pram.

Watching Harry fly around on that broom became one of James' greatest sources of entertainment, and he spent many (most) of his afternoons tossing things up into the air for Harry to catch, blathering on endlessly about how "Lily, I'm not kidding, he's going to be a brilliant player one day! Probably a Seeker, I mean, Lily, _look at him flying!_ "

He'd spent a few hours one evening digging around in their old Hogwarts boxes for that Snitch he'd nicked so they could practise, but he hadn't found it (mostly because Lily had distracted him, not that he was at all complaining).

But still, being locked up there… it just wasn't the same. He wanted to be able to take Harry to the big fields near where his parents had lived so they could fly around all afternoon, to Diagon Alley and get ice cream, to the beach and watch Harry throw stones into the ocean, to Flourish and Blotts and pick out all the ridiculous children's books that Harry would love and Lily would find hilarious (Babbitty Rabbitty had nearly done her in, she'd laughed so hard about "WIZARDS READING TO THEIR KIDS ABOUT A LAUGHING STUMP!").

His mum always said that being a mother was like having your heart walk around outside your chest for the rest of your life, and he knew, from the moment he saw Harry, that that's what fatherhood was, too. It was terrifying, exhilarating, maddening, exhausting, stressful, and a million other things, but it was also one of the most brilliant things that had ever happened to him. He wanted to give Harry the childhood he'd had, to give him everything that he could ever want, but they were stuck inside the cottage and Lily said they probably shouldn't be spoiling him anyway. She'd smirked at him while they sat on the couch, watched Harry roll around with the cat on the floor, "We can't spoil him, James. Do you want him to end up like you circa Hogwarts years one through five?"

She'd shrieked with laughter when James buried his fingers into her sides, shouted, "Harry, tickle Mummy!" Harry promptly stumbled to his feet, jumped onto the couch, and joined in the fun.

He couldn't give Harry everything (couldn't even leave the house), but he could, at least, give Harry this.


End file.
